• Hui Guo, Yu Peng, Zhengmao Hu, Ying Li, Guanglei Xun, Jianjun Ou, Liangdan Sun, Zhimin Xiong, Yanling Liu, Tianyun Wang, Jingjing Chen, Lu Xia, Ting Bai, Yidong Shen, Qi Tian, Yiqiao Hu, Lu Shen, Rongjuan Zhao, Xuejun Zhang, Fengyu Zhang, Jingping Zhao, Xiaobing Zou, and Kun Xia.
• The State Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
• Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 10; 7: 44155.

AbstractAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) describes a group of neurodevelopmental disorders with high heritability, although the underlying genetic determinants of ASDs remain largely unknown. Large-scale whole-genome studies of copy number variation in Han Chinese samples are still lacking. We performed a genome-wide copy number variation analysis of 343 ASD trios, 203 patients with sporadic cases and 988 controls in a Chinese population using Illumina genotyping platforms to identify CNVs and related genes that may contribute to ASD risk. We identified 32 rare CNVs larger than 1 Mb in 31 patients. ASD patients were found to carry a higher global burden of rare, large CNVs than controls. Recurrent de novo or case-private CNVs were found at 15q11-13, Xp22.3, 15q13.1-13.2, 3p26.3 and 2p12. The de novo 15q11-13 duplication was more prevalent in this Chinese population than in those with European ancestry. Several genes, including GRAMD2 and STAM, were implicated as novel ASD risk genes when integrating whole-genome CNVs and whole-exome sequencing data. We also identified several CNVs that include known ASD genes (SHANK3, CDH10, CSMD1) or genes involved in nervous system development (NYAP2, ST6GAL2, GRM6). Besides, our study also implicated Contactins-NYAPs-WAVE1 pathway in ASD pathogenesis. Our findings identify ASD-related CNVs in a Chinese population and implicate novel ASD risk genes and related pathway for further study.

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